For more than a year, La Quinta, California residents have been fighting a massive, 16.7 acre surfing pool, a 150 room hotel and 600 short term rentals, that would have consumed almost 400 million gallons of water annually. That fight ended on Sept 22, 2022 when the La Quinta City Council denied approval for the project.

Alena Callimanis, Carolyn Winnor, many other supporters of the La Quinta Residents for Responsible Development, as well as sound, light and water consultants, presented expert testimony to the City Council.   Nearly 2100 La Quinta area residents signed a petition opposing the water park.  Alena and Carolyn wrote the following regarding their success…

“Richard, I am so happy to let you know that we won. As we were sitting there during the meeting, we thought for sure we had lost. But when the deliberations started and the first two Council members said they would not support the project, at that point, Carolyn and I looked at each other we realized that we were going to win. 

The reason the City said no, was that they could not approve the Zone change to allow a Tourist Commercial area in the middle of existing residential homes, which violated many provisions in the La Quinta 2035 General Plan. That was the issue you had us focus on ever since our first meeting! So, thank you for steering us in the right direction. We are grateful to the La Quinta City Council for recognizing this issue.  

We are very thankful for your support. The point graph you created to show our supporter locations in La Quinta and the PDF you provided with our supporter comments really helped our cause.

Thank you again! I am so happy we could report this wonderful result.”

The point graph showing supporter locations and their reasons for signing the petition can be viewed at: https://ceds.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/La-Quinta-Petition-Signers-Reasons.pdf